Comments on: The Forever Movie

By: Launch pad countdown | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

Launch pad countdown | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 19:15:55 +0000

[...] than famous author Joe Haldeman, who wrote The Forever War, a classic piece of satirical fiction (which is in the works for a Hollywood movie, too!). Joe is a great guy and it’ll be good to see him again. Also attending is my bud Scott [...]

By: Launch pad closes March 15th! | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine

Launch pad closes March 15th! | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 18:00:47 +0000

[...] and it’ll be held this year from July 14 – 21. The special lecturer is Joe Haldeman. Yes, that Joe Haldeman. I’ll be there too, probably later in the week (I have to be in Vegas for TAM 7 the week [...]

By: coolstar

coolstar — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 00:39:45 +0000

Please, The Forever War is THE most over-rated novel in history (more so than even Catch-22). ho-hum, another cynical anti-war novel by another hack Vietnam vet writer.
not original in 1974, worse now. Scalzi’s Old Man’s War is much, much better on so many levels: more realistic (not just stupidly cynical), MUCH better characterization, and on and on…….

By: Jennifer Ouellette

Jennifer Ouellette — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 18:54:48 +0000

The original novel apparently was heavily cut when first published. There is a new uncut edition coming out February 9th. Order on Amazon today!

By: John Charles

John Charles — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:38:20 +0000

Just like Stuart and his dad, I read The Forever War in its Analog serialzation in the 1970s. Haldeman impressed me as a giant of detiled, hard-edged science fiction, right up there with Heinlein and Clarke. Really hope the movie does it justice.

By: RonS

RonS — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:13:24 +0000

This might sound a bit odd…
I love the skies and I love anime and I love sci fi books and I dislike tall, bearded men.
See where this is headed yet ?
You probably don’t and I don’t blame you : I am relating to a short Makoto Shinkai marvelously animated piece called “Voices of Distant Star” – read it up on wikipedia. It carried the same concept of relativistic time distortion separting two childhood lovers (WOW!). Yet it does all that, and provides a rather bittersweet conclusion, all within 22 minutes. That was what first pulled me towards those two sci classics : THE FOREVER WAR by Joe Haldeman and FALLEN DRAGON by Peter F. Hamilton. They are both crying out for a movie, and their prayers have been answered.
TOLD you this would be a weird discussion…

By: Roberto

Roberto — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 18:05:02 +0000

I read it ages ago and I loved it. I also read the sequels. I really enjoy Haldeman’s work and I llok forward to this movie. Greetings from Argentina.

By: Gary Ansorge

Gary Ansorge — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:09:25 +0000

Point of order: Heinlien did say that Starship troopers wasn’t about the “glories of war”. It was about the Horror of War. Big difference there,,,

Gry 7

By: BMcP

BMcP — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 16:06:45 +0000

This book is crying out to be made into a movie. I never understood why it hasn’t been

Because Hollywood stands a pretty good chance of firing off a big ol’ cowpie all over it and missing the satrical tone of the book. Ridley Scott has a great early record with Alien and Blade Runner, but in the last few years he has been more known for flops like G.I. Jane and Kingdom of Heaven.

I can only imagine what the family values set response would be to some of the future societies presented that the main character is confronted with when he makes returns to Earth over so many years. There was one point where the government official encouraged gay relations to keep the population down, I can just see the religious flipping out if that is kept in the movie. LOL.

By: Yossarian

Yossarian — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 15:05:15 +0000

I saw this done as a play(!) some years ago, and it wasn’t half bad.

By: Doug

Doug — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:36:36 +0000

Well I hate to sound pessimistic, but I think of Dave Brin’s “Postman”, and Zelazny’s “Damnation Alley” as movies. “Forever War” has a lot of elements that are going to be difficult to bring to the big screen; so my guess is they won’t be. I think the best hope is the keep expectations low. If they use FW as a point of departure for a movie and make a good movie, that would be fine, too. That’s what happened to “Red October” IMO. Both the book and the movie were excellent, but they only vaguely resembled each other; which worked out.

By: Jim Atkins

Jim Atkins — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:42:50 +0000

According to Amazon, The Forever War is going to be re-released in paperback in March 2009- I lost my copy in a move a few years ago. COOL!!!

By: Jack Hagerty

Jack Hagerty — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:39:18 +0000

shane Says: “I like Starship Troopers”

I do too, Shane, but only because I am able to successfully partition my brain and convince myself that the movie has nothing to do with Heinlein.

For me, the low spot of the film was Denise Richards. I never for a millisecond believed that she was piloting that ship. It seemed she was just moving the control yoke back and forth at random while talking over her shoulder. Of course, if she’d participated in the co-ed shower scene, I could have forgiven her…

- Jack

By: a lurker

a lurker — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:50:14 +0000

Some years ago Haldeman stated that if The Forever War was made into a movie that he would probably cry all the way to the bank. If Ridley Scott is able to make a good script that reasonably true to novel, then maybe Haldeman will get to laugh all the way to the bank after all.

By: BaldApe

BaldApe — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 00:04:44 +0000

(I have yet to see Starship Troopers, on principle…)

Yer not missin’ much.

Actually, I agree with John Foudy. As long as you didn’t expect Starship Troupers to have anything to do with the novel, it was OK. The sequels are just stoopid.

I am looking forward to The Forever War. That was a seriously cool book, especially the end.

Been a long time since I’ve read it. I guess I have to get a copy.

By: Pierre

Pierre — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 23:31:44 +0000

Wow… thanks to your post, Phil, I was able to solve an old mystery. It seems I have
read The Forever War about 20 years ago, but I had forgotten both the title and the
name of the author. I only remembered some plot elements. When I read your post,
I went to Wikipedia to find out more about the book, and made the connection. I
had been wondering for years what book it was. I’m trying to buy back a copy of all the
books I’ve ever read; I was reading all the time as a teenager, but I couldn’t afford
to buy my books so the library was a convenient place to find some novels. Now
I know I can add TFW to my list of things to get. (My bookshelves are now quite
impressive!)

By: Neil

Neil — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 22:05:50 +0000

Hmmm…I guees I’m in the minority here. I find Heinlen’s short stories to be inventive and entertaining, and contain lots of little points to think about. I find his novels irritating…as in not very interesting, with shallow characters, simplistic, jingoistic philosophies parading as “gritty” or “hard realities”, and a level of hero/soldier worship that is beyond pathetic.
I was a bit irritated by the movie at first, but then I realized that it was at least a little bit of a farce, using the extremely brutal nature of the bugs’ invasion to highlight the extremly brutal nature of Heinlen’s ideals. I wish the farce had been taken further, but I guess it’s enough that the movie made one big point, quite different from the one the book intended: Ideas and policies that Heinlen seems to endorse are only reasonable in the most unreasonable situations. Until giant bugs attack the planet and try to kill everyone, there’s really no excuse for such shallow and callous thinking.
Enough Heinlen Bashing…I’ll have to give Haldeman a try and see if I like The Forever War any better. If it really is in any way a satire, and is anything like Catch-22(one of the two best war books ever written, along with Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead) I’ll probably like it a lot more than Heinlen’s weapons-fetish snuff porn.
Oooh, Bonus…I just remebered I still have a $20 gift certificate for my local used book store…It probably won’t do me much good concerning Death From the Skies, but maybe there will be a copy of The Forever War.

By: duffytvs

duffytvs — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 21:39:06 +0000

Thanks for the info., Phil. I read it a couple of years ago and thought it was great. I loved ‘Camouflage’ also (and think it’d make a good movie). I’ve wanted to see this one on screen since I read it; it’s a close second to my desire to see ‘Spin’ made into a movie.

By: John Foudy

John Foudy — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:51:08 +0000

“I thought NightFall was the WORST movie ever made. No one could possibly rape and mutilate a story like those jerks did.

Then along comes Starship Troopers …”

Nightfall was the first movie I ever saw in a movie theatre (meaning I paid $ to see it) that I walked out on about halfway through… utterly horrible.

Considered as an adaptation of Heinlein’s novel, Starship Troopers was terrible…
as a generic summer blockbuster bad movie it was entertaining enough I thought.

By: BMurray

BMurray — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 19:29:30 +0000

Another great book gets humped to death by the Hollywood entertainment machine. Glad Joe’s getting a chunk of cash, though, and it will mean a new edition of the book, but my expectations for this are very low indeed.

By: Ian

Ian — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:57:08 +0000

It’s pretty hard SF. I wonder how much of that will make it onto the screen?

By: Arthur Maruyama

Arthur Maruyama — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:47:07 +0000

In one of Haldeman’s anthologies he tells the story of meeting Heinlein at an SF convention shortly after the publication of “The Forever War” (FW) Haldeman was nervous because the book is in many ways an homage to Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” (ST) because both are tales of interstellar war from the frontline grunt’s point-of-view rather than usual swashbuckling hero who–almost single-handedly–overturns the Empire and gets the girl. On top of everything else other people didn’t know what Heinlein thought of FW before this meeting, so there were a number of onlookers watching for Heinlein’s reaction. Haldeman introduced himself, explained how FW was very much inspired by ST, then asked if Heinlein had read FW. When Heinlein pronounced it “good” and said he appreciated the homage, as Haldeman put it he doesn’t remember the rest of that convention at all because he spent it walking three feet in the air.

I guess Haldeman already had his “squeee!” moment for Forever War–the Ridley Scott movie may only be icing on the cake.

I would consider reading Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (MUCH better than the movie which gets so many things completely wrong) before reading the Forever War.

By: zeb

zeb — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:37:05 +0000

Wow, I actually squeeed out loud when I saw this post. Good thing no one else is home right now. I LOVE this book. The sequel was a bit strange, but I do like how it was wrapped up after all the weird stuff happened. Can’t wait until it comes out.

By: JeffS

JeffS — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:33:14 +0000

Yes!!! Great news, great book. In fact, I actually re-read it only 6 weeks ago. Timeless classic.

By: MrMarkAZ

MrMarkAZ — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 18:28:53 +0000

My $0.02: I thought “The Forever War” was an inferior version of “Starship Troopers,” although the time dilation angle was interesting. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it, either. On the other hand, I liked both the Nightfall novella and the movie, though for different reasons, so I guess my tastes are a bit suspect.